


In the Mood for a Melody

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3360050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a pianist!Darren prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Mood for a Melody

Chris has never actually stopped to consider exactly how much of his money his ex burned through, but he’s pretty sure it’s a lot. 

The hot tub out by the pool. The landscaping. The weekly gardener to tend to the landscaping. The countless outfits for countless events that Chris himself didn’t even actually care to attend. 

The vacations that he always insisted were to keep Chris from being stressed, to give Chris a chance to get away and have some peace and quiet… even when Chris knew deep down that he’d be just as happy finding his peace and quiet within his own walls. 

And all the things he didn’t even tell Chris about, the things Chris only noticed when skimming bank statements. He’s sure he’ll still be discovering ways he was being subtly and unsexily screwed for months to come - including the example currently standing on his doorstep right now. 

It’s a man, one wearing a slightly rumpled but well fitted suit.

“If you’re here for the dinner party, it’s canceled,” Chris says, weariness dripping from his voice. He’d had his assistant call the entire list of people associated with the weekly dinner parties his ex had loved so much to throw - the caterer, the serving company, the florist, and of course… all the guests. 

“Oh. That blows. Kiiiinda needed the money,” the guy says, frowning. After a conflicted moment, he takes a couple steps back. “Well, sorry to interrupt your night.” 

“Wait,” Chris says, for a moment choosing to feel bad for someone besides himself. “What exactly do you even do?” 

The guy looks surprised. “Seriously?” 

Chris just waits out the expression. Sure, this guy probably thinks he’s a dick for never taking the time to glance at the hired help, much less learn their names - but on the list of things Chris will admit a dick for, that’s fairly low down. 

“I play piano,” he says. 

“Fine,” Chris says, holding the door open more widely. 

“What?” 

“You need the money and apparently I’ve been paying you to play piano, so come on. Play.” Chris turns and walks away without waiting to see if he’s been followed. 

*

Chris is not in the room when the piano player starts playing. He’s actually in the kitchen, staring at a bottle of whiskey that probably cost as much as his first car. He was never a fan of whiskey before, but right now he feels like doing something stupid and cracking this open fits the bill. 

His dad was always a beer drinker when Chris was growing up. Chris can’t stand the taste of beer, either.  
  
He clinks a couple of ice cubes into a glass and fills it halfway full. The alcohol might be a smooth, rich burn but it’s still a burn. He almost chokes at the first sip, gagging a little to the soundtrack of something classical he can’t name. 

After thinking about it briefly, he pours a second glass and sends a triumphant glare to the newly emptied space in the bottle. He takes the second glass into the living room with him and places it on the piano, not pausing to see if the player even wants it or not. 

Chris settles in his favorite chair and gets comfortable. He closes his eyes and focuses his breathing and lets himself sink into the music. It’s not a style he’s typically a fan of, and piano isn’t his instrument of choice to go to - but there’s still something about it that starts to soothe his frayed edges.  
  
He doesn’t realize at what point he starts to drift off, but he’s put a dent in the bottle of whiskey and the piano player has more than played his time. He’s awakened by a gentle hand jostling his shoulder. 

“Hey, man,” the guy says. “I gotta go.” 

Chris blinks blearily up at him. He’ll have a headache soon, but he’s not that drunk. That’s how it always seems to work for him. “Okay,” he says. He gets to his feet and pulls out his wallet. “How much?” 

“Two hundred an hour,” he says. When he sees Chris looking around helplessly to figure out the time he adds, “I played for three hours.” 

Six hundred bucks a night for the fucking music, and this has been happening once a month. “How long have you been doing this?” 

“Oh, I started playing little gigs when I was like sixteen. My parents totally pimped me out, man-” 

Chris interrupts him. “I meant for me.” 

“Right. Uh. About a year.” The guy scratches the back of his neck. “So I’m guessing you’re not really gonna need me anymore.” 

“You would be right.” Chris hands over a small stack of bills, the amount Darren requested plus a tip. He might be disgruntled, but he’s not an that much of an ass. 

The guy doesn’t count it, but he does hand Chris a slightly bent card in return. “Here you go. Just in case you do ever need me again.” 

Chris drops it on the table once the guy’s gone, not even really sparing a look at it. 

*

It’s actually another two weeks before he finds the card again. He’s on a compulsive cleaning binge and he finds it underneath a chair, likely swept there by a playful cat up to no good. 

The card reads Darren Criss, Musician For Hire and underneath it lists enough instruments to make Chris’s brain hurt. The final line is a website, which Chris immediately grabs his laptop and types in. 

The website has a section of videos and there is where the real problem is, because Chris has always had a weakness for the vortex of online video. 

*  
  
He hasn’t been sleeping well since the break up. He hasn’t been eating that well, either. He’s drinking - not a lot, in relative terms, but a lot for him since he doesn’t usually like to lose control of himself like that. 

That he’s only drinking at home alone apparently is where the wheels fall off of that. There’s no one to embarrass when there is just no one at all. 

It’s not even that he misses his ex. He just misses there being someone there. He misses the smell of breakfast being made, even if it wasn’t being made for him. He misses the bathroom floor being damp and the mirrors steamed when he walks in. He misses being able to text someone else to feed the cat and let the dog out. He misses bickering about groceries and planning meals with someone. He misses the other half of the bed being warm, just once in a while. He misses sex. 

None of those are specific to the man he spent two years of his life with, though it feels like maybe they should be. In fact, Chris spends most of his time fantasizing about things he thinks he misses that if he really thought that hard about it he never really had in the first place. It’s all the lost potential, it’s feeling like he devoted two years of his life to build something that will never come to fruition. 

(Even if it probably wouldn’t have anyway.)

So yeah, he’s fresh off a break up and he’s lonely, but he’s lonely in that way that doesn’t want to be cured. He’s stir crazy by himself but he can’t face the cloying pity of his friends or family. He doesn’t want someone that knows him that well, that can read him, that feels like they have a right to an opinion on his life. 

He picks up the card and stares down at it. Maybe the company of a stranger will do. 

*

“Yo!” 

“Is this Darren Criss?” 

“The one and only.” 

“This is Chris Colfer. You played piano for me-” 

“For like two years, so yeah, I remember your name.” 

Chris feels appropriately embarrassed, but he’s good at ignoring that. “Are you free to play tonight?” 

“Uh that’s, that’s short notice, man. What time?” 

“Whenever,” Chris says. “It’s not for a party. Just - for me.” 

“You just want me to come play… for you?” Darren sounds dubious. “You’re not planning on luring me there and then selling my liver on the black market, are you? Because I gotta warn you, I drink like a fish. My liver’s probably already halfway shot, it wouldn’t bring too much in.” 

Chris almost smiles. If only Darren knew what a victory that was. “Just want you to play for me,” he says. 

“I don’t have a tux-” 

“No dress code.” Chris interrupts him. There’s silence, like Darren’s trying to think of another excuse not to. “I’ll give you $250 an hour.” 

It’s a ridiculous amount to pay for company, but he’s not to the point of needing a hooker yet - and besides, this will piss off his publicist way less. 

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Darren says. 

*  
  
That night Darren plays for him for exactly two hours, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a cartoon frog on it. 

Chris doesn’t fall asleep this time, but he does fall into a nicely zoned out place. The absence of silence and the occasional sounds of confirmation that he’s sharing the same place with someone else do wonders to calm the growing sense of anxiety inside of him. 

He pays Darren with a check for six hundred dollars. “Did my ex usually tip you?” He asks. 

“Nope,” Darren says, not shy about answering. “But the pay was good, and sometimes I stole the half-full bottles of champagne when you guys were cleaning up. That helped make up for it. You guys stocked the good shit.” 

“Yeah,” Chris mutters. 

Chris never stuck around to help clean. Chris barely even stuck around for the actual parties. Typically he’d eat and then disappear into his office upstairs, trying his best to drown out the sound of people be only half knew and liked even less invading his space. 

He tips Darren well just as a fuck you to the ex. 

“Can I book you next Friday night again?” Chris asks. 

“Okay…” Darren shrugs. “Sure, works for me.” 

“Good.” They stand there, an awkward few feet apart before Darren waves and takes a few backwards steps toward the door. 

*

That’s the routine, after that. 

Of course, the wallowing hermit act Chris pulls doesn’t last that long. He has to work, after all, has to make sure he’s still bringing in the kind of money that can afford private piano concerts. He has another book down the pipeline, currently undergoing edits. He has a couple scripts he’s being told to choose between. His first choice had been to do both, because throwing himself into work for an extended period of time seemed fantastic, but the shooting schedules conflicted and one happens to be overseas. 

He decides he doesn’t feel like leaving his cat or his own bed for that long. His best friend tells him he’s still moping and maybe some British dick could cure what ails him, but it’s not advice he takes. 

Instead he starts filming a movie that’s a confusing mix of B-grade cheese and indie vagueness. His character is a genderfluid former dancer moonlighting at the city’s last video rental store, but the dialogue is witty when the movie forgets that it’s trying so hard. 

If he’s lucky, it won’t get panned. If he’s not lucky, at least he’s getting paid. 

*

“I saw your face on a magazine today,” Darren says. “It was trippy.” 

“I hope they made up a good rumor about me this time,” Chris says. 

“Yeah, apparently you have a fifty year old lover or something. And a drug problem. It was some kind of special issue catching everyone up on the cast of former hit tv shows. That show of yours only ended like five years ago, didn’t it?” 

“Only five?” Chris muses on that. “Feels like it was a lifetime ago.” 

*

  
His friend Rob invites him out on a Friday night. 

“You need to get drunk,” Rob says. “I won’t be satisfied until I’m dragging your sorry ass home because you can’t stand upright anymore.” 

“If you want to see me like that, just take the Ambien away from me and wait a couple days. I’ll be a slurring and zombie-like, guaranteed. And you won’t even have to deal with the puke situation.” 

“Not the same.” Rob claps him on the shoulder. They’re having lunch together at a little place not far away from where Chris is filming. “Come on. Go out with me.” 

“Be careful, I might think you’re hitting on me.” It’s an old joke between them, born of the ridiculous crush Chris had once held. It only took three or four mortifying misunderstandings before Chris finally tucked those feelings away and moved on. 

In retrospect, life had been easier when he only pined after guys he couldn’t have. Domesticity hadn’t lived up to the fantasy. 

Rob gives him one of those wicked, formerly knee-weakening smiles. Oh, hell. Maybe it’s still a little knee-weakening. And maybe Rob is kind of coming onto him. 

But quick fucks don’t hold much allure, and especially not ones with potential to end friendships that he values. 

“I have a thing,” Chris says. 

“A thing?” 

“A previous engagement.” 

“Like a date?” 

Chris shrugs. “A previous engagement.”

“You’re holding out on me, Colfer. Tell me about him!” Rob leans forward, eager to live vicariously. 

“He’s cute,” Chris says. “A piano player. We’ve been spending some time together.” 

All of those things are certainly true. 

If Rob assumes more than what he’s saying, it’s not Chris’s fault.  
  


*

  
Darren shows up one Friday with a bag of takeout. “You mind if I scarf this down first? I usually have a late lunch since I play through dinner, but I didn’t have time today.” 

It’s never occurred to Chris that he makes Darren play through a meal, though considering he was originally hired for a dinner party maybe it should have. 

“Sorry,” Chris says, suddenly regretting all the times he must have forced Darren to go hungry. He knows it really isn’t that big of a transgression, but he hates those unintentional oversights. “I - forget. I eat at weird times. I have since I was a kid.” 

He also sleeps at weird times, a few hours here and there if left to his own devices, or a drugged out twelve hour stretch. 

Darren makes a sound to acknowledge he’s heard Chris, but already has a mouth stuffed full of fries. 

“Do you want something to drink?” Chris asks. 

Darren licks the salt from his lips. “Yeah, that’d be great, actually.” 

“Follow me.” Chris leads Darren into the kitchen. He opens the fridge and then stares at it, wondering how the two shelves of Diet Coke and four bottles of wine (left from months ago) will appear to a stranger. “Soda? All I have is diet.” 

“Sure.” Darren accepts the can without complaint.  
  


Chris stands there watching while Darren eats. 

*  
  
The next week, he has dinner sitting out when Darren gets there.  
  
In a fit of frustration over not actually knowing what kind of food Darren likes, he’d ordered from three different places: a pizza, chinese, and a sandwich catering tray. 

“Did you… order these?” Darren asks, looking both excited and confused. 

Only then does it occur to Chris that maybe he went overboard. “No,” he lies. “They’re left over from set. I just thought you might want something.” 

“Shit yeah!” Darren grabs a slice of pizza and an egg roll. 

Two and a half hours later, Chris sends the rest of the food home with Darren. 

He’s not sure why it makes him feel so bad. 

*

Ashley wants to meet the guy suddenly monopolizing Chris’s every Friday night. 

“We’re not dating,” Chris says. “Don’t make it into something it’s not.” 

“But you’d like to be?” 

“I don’t know anything about him.” 

“You see him every week now,” Ashley points out. “What do you even do with him?” 

Chris shrugs and pushes his food around on his plate. “I… listen.” 

Ashley still doesn’t get it. “Well, if you do that much listening and you still don’t think you know him, maybe you aren’t asking the right questions.” 

She doesn’t get it, but maybe she’s right.

*  
  
“Come sit down and have a drink before you play.” 

Darren can’t hide his surprise. 

“If you want,” Chris adds. 

“Sure, yeah. Totally. My wheels can always use some greasing.” 

And yeah, Chris’s mind takes that somewhere south of what Darren intended. 

For a moment or two when they sit down, it’s awkward. It’s a familiar awkward, the same kind Chris feels like he’s spent most of his life trying desperately to figure out how to shed. It’s a cloak of awkward, an awkward curse placed on him at birth, his stigma to carry through life. 

But Darren seems to have been blessed with the opposite, with the magic power to suck the awkward from any situation. 

Darren has no problem with conversation, even apparently carrying him on all by himself. He’d told Ashley that he spent their time together listening, and technicality makes now the same except that it isn’t really the same at all. Words instead of music, but it’s just as engaging to Chris. 

“-so I was like, fourteen, and my parents were so sick of paying for me to learn new instruments. I brought him this accordion just to see what they said and my mother is such a badass that she basically grounded me until I learned how to play it.” 

“I wish I had family stories like that,” Chris says, words that fall fast from his mouth and then hang there. There’s silence, Darren waiting to see if he’ll say more while Chris is startled he said that much. Being in the public eye has taught him to be careful with his confessions, to guard his words for fear of how they’ll be twisted when repeated on down the line. 

He invites Darren into his home once a week now, but his home and his self are not the same thing. 

When Darren realizes Chris probably isn’t going to volunteer anything else, he starts to tell Chris a story about the time he drove to Las Vegas with his brother. 

*

After that, it changes. Darren still plays and Chris still pays him but they talk, too. They have a drink or food before, they talk between songs. 

“You can make requests,” Darren tells him once. 

Chris is happy just to hear what Darren wants to play, though. 

*  
  
“What did you think of me the first time we met?” Chris asks. 

Darren chuckles, shaking his head. “Which time?” Darren’s fingers dance over the keys of the piano. “When I met you as Chris Colfer the thrower of extravagant, Gatsby-elian parties?” 

“Gatsby-elian?” Chris repeats, slightly mocking. 

Darren tilts his head over with a crooked smile, silently acknowledging how worthy of mockery the phrase is. Somehow Darren has the ability, Chris has noticed, to go from eloquently verbose to stoner-slacker in his vocabulary. It’s like as soon as Darren feels comfortable, the words start to flow. Chris finds the juxtaposition amusing. 

“You don’t even remember that, though. So maybe it’s not fair to tell you what I thought then.” Darren is teasing him now. Teasing, or maybe something heavier. 

“Maybe we can save that for another time.” Chris agrees. He’s also vaguely curious to know what Darren thought of his ex, though that feels like a can of worms that might be best serve staying unopened. 

“Then you want to know what I thought of you when I met… you.” Darren pauses in his playing to turn enough to smile back to Chris. They’ve developed a fairly good rapport, him and Darren and Chris swirls the whiskey in his glass. He’s still making a dent in his large bottle. 

“Indulge me.” 

Nodding, Darren turns back to the piano and plays a few more notes, giving himself a musical introduction.

“Well. You were short. Not, physically, I mean, come on look at me. I’m tiny as fuck. But you were brusque and honestly, you looked like you needed a good bottle of whiskey. Or a hug. Or both man, I don’t know. But funny too. That came later though. The first night you fell asleep on me.” Darren’s lips twitch before he breaks into a smirk. “You fucking fell asleep on me as I was playing. Never had such a resounding response for my skills.” 

“You relaxed me,” Chris says. “And I needed it, at that point.” 

Darren nods and just keeps playing at the piano. It looks so effortless when he plays.  “But you asked me back and it was intriguing.” There is a longer pause, the music keeping it from being awkward between them. “And then, then you were funny. It was nice. You became the thing I looked forward to in my week.” 

“The money was that good?” Chris asks, almost hoping Darren will play it off as a joke just so Chris doesn’t have to deal with the nauseating pounding in his chest that hope leaves behind. 

But Darren goes quiet, leaving Chris in silent anticipation and agony. 

*

Chris is just… he’s bad at dating. He’s bad at wooing. 

He started on this career path far too young. He went from from high school, where no one wanted him, to Hollywood - where everyone did but for all the wrong reasons. 

Sex was easy to find and easy to get, but he faltered in the process of taking it anywhere besides the bedroom. When he did manage to get into a relationship, it was because he was purused. 

In high school he had all those fantasies of what a great boyfriend he’d be if ever had the chance, but now he’s not really sure if he even lived up to that end of it. He thinks of life with his ex and how things felt right only because he didn’t bother to think of how they could be better. Once the shine wore off it was easier to accept the status quo, to look at this person he was comfortable with and had already gone so far to entwine his life with. 

He stayed in the relationship for two years out of complacency and maybe his ex had known that. Maybe that’s why it took a year of them drifting around each other before he finally decided the lifestyle wasn’t worth sticking around for. 

Chris fell into the relationship because he was pursued and he enjoyed being pursued, and he stayed in it because staying was easier than leaving. 

He’s tired of just doing what’s easier. He thinks maybe Darren’s explosive energy, his drive and his passion for life, maybe they’re contagious. 

Darren makes Chris want to be stupid and impulsive. They still don’t know each other all that well, not nearly as well as Chris would like. There’s still a line there, the point where Chris is someone who pays Darren to do something for him, the point where Chris is a public figure who struggles to let people in. 

He feels like he doesn’t know much about Darren, and Darren knows almost nothing about him. 

Maybe Chris needs to change that. Maybe he’s ready to. 

*

  
It’s Chris that makes the first move, but only because Darren paves the way. 

He shows up one week on Chris’s doorstep holding a box of chocolates. 

“What’s that?” Chris asks, and for one little moment his stomach does an excited twisting thing. 

“They’re for you.” Darren hands him the box The cellophane wrapper is off and when Chris opens it he sees that one chocolate is missing. “I had to test them for poison,” Darren says. 

“What’s this for?” Chris asks. 

Darren gives him a strange smile. “It’s Valentine’s Day.” 

“Oh.” Chris frowns. “I didn’t realize. You didn’t have anyone you’d rather spend it with?” 

“I don’t know how in demand you think I am… besides, I made a playlist for you,” Darren says, hopping past Chris over to the piano. He cracks his knuckles and settles in, launching into a piano version of Anaconda. 

Chris stands there holding his secondhand chocolates and laughs. Darren showed up on his doorstep with chocolates and a mix tape, both carefully crafted to allow Chris to ignore what it could mean if it wasn't what he wanted it to mean. 

Darren is brilliant and handsome and Chris can already tell the world probably doesn't give him enough credit, but Chris is halfway gone on him and he's only seen the tip of the iceberg. 

He waits politely until the song is over, then puts the chocolates aside and says, “Do you want to do something different tonight?”

Darren swivels around. “Like what? I have my guitar out in the car-” 

“No, I mean… let’s just go out somewhere. Dinner?” Chris asks. Nervous flutters make his fingers flex and twist together, but he pushes through. “Go out with me, I mean.” 

Darren gives him a look so layered in complexity that Chris can’t even begin to understand it, but what he does understand is the way Darren nods and the smile on his face. “I thought you'd never ask.” 

*  


The next Friday morning Chris wakes up drooling on his own pillow with the imprint of someone else’s warmth cozying up the bed he’s in, despite the absence of another person. 

He gets up and finds a pair of shorts to put on, cataloguing the aches and soreness of a well-spent night between the sheets. He can’t be bothered with contacts, so on go the glasses and he’ll just ignore what a mess his hair is. He’s too eager to get downstairs, too busy trying to convince himself that Darren must- 

He stops at the top of the staircase and smiles. Darren’s playing the piano downstairs.


End file.
